Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Social media pushes menu of anger with side of frustration -- June 28, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

You can count on one thing in our polarized, social
media age: An action often leads to massive over-reaction.

This week’s case in point is the Red Hen incident.

The action was the decision by a restaurant owner in
Lexington, Va., to take a stand against the “inhumane and unethical” Trump administration
by refusing to serve White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The over-reaction on both sides rolled in like lava in
Hawaii -- fiery, swift and destructive.

Tens of thousands tweets in support of and against the
Red Hen, including an angry one from President Donald Trump. Calls for more
shaming and for more civility. Protests and counter-protests, and an arrest of
a man who threw chicken dung at the restaurant. All this in just three days.

To recap, Stephanie Wilkinson, owner of the 26-seat
restaurant, told Sanders, after consulting with her employees, the restaurant
has standards to uphold, “such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation” and
asked her to leave, Wilkinson told The Washington Post.

The next morning, Sanders tweeted, “I
always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with,
respectfully and will continue to do so.”

Trump fired off a nasty
tweet to his 53 million followers: “The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on
cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job)
rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I
always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the
inside!”

Actually, no. For the record, the Red Hen sailed
through its last health department inspection with no violations, NBC News
reported, but Florida health inspectors cited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort with
more than a dozen violations last year.

Trumpians posted
Wilkinson’s homeaddress and phone number online, accused
her of various crimes and invited Immigration and Customs Enforcement to check her
employees.

The Republican Party of Virginia urged supporters to
sign up for a boycott “so we can show the Red Hen and its liberal supporters
that patriotic Trump supporters are the silent majority in Virginia!”

One of the more than 1,200 signers commented, “Haven’t
we had enough of being pushed around by the left?”

On Tuesday, as protests engulfed the Red Hen, a man
reportedly was arrested after he threw chicken manure at the building while
shouting, “Make America Great Again.” The restaurant is reportedly closed until
July 5.

Other Trump officials have also been shamed in public,
and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., rashly urged Trump foes to keep up the
pressure.

“If you see somebody
from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline
station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them,” she
said Saturday at a rally in Los Angeles.

“If you disagree with a politician, organize your
fellow citizens to action and vote them out of office. But no one should call
for the harassment of political opponents,” Schumer said in a floor speech.
“That’s not right. That’s not American.”

In Lexington, Wilkinson said she had asked her
employees, several of whom are gay, what they wanted her to do, and they chose
to turn Sanders away.

I understand their frustration and anger at Trump’s
policies, but was kicking out Sanders worth it?

The surprise appearance of Trump’s spokeswoman nearly
200 miles from Washington could have been a moment for remembering Michelle
Obama’s words: “When they go low, we go high.”

Alice Waters’ famous restaurant Chez Panisse in
Berkeley, Calif., faced a staff mutiny in 1974 when hated Nixon aide H.R.
Haldeman came in with a large party. Ultimately, chef Jeremiah Tower insisted the
pariah be served.

“What chefs should know is, it’s not about you. It’s
about the customer. You don’t get to judge who can partake of that hospitality.
If customers are being obnoxious you can ask them to leave. But not because of
who they are or what their politics is. Everyone has the same right to live in
this country. If they’re just sitting there and enjoying their dinner,
hallelujah,” Tower told NPR last year.

Unintentionally, the Red Hen gave Trump fans a gift –
a social media cause to rally around and a weapon against Democrats in fall
campaigns. That’s a mistake Trump foes should not make again.